McLaren Vale Wineries - A Brief Introduction

McLaren Vale is an Australian Geographical Indication for the purpose of wine-making. Geographically, vale is referred to a valley. Therefore, this region is a valley of river. McLaren Vale is essentially of triangular shape and is bounded on three sides. Adelaide lies to its north, the St Vincent gulf to the west and the Mt Lofty Ranges to the east and south. McLaren Vale is both a region and a small township within it. In fact, the region derives its name from the township. The grape growing areas within this are Old Reynella, Willunga, Aldinga, McLaren Vale Flat and McLaren Vale.

The importance of the region lies in the fact that this is an important food and wine region of Australia. Due to its well-recognized wine industry, it is also included in the Great Wine Capitals of the World. The region has been named after John McLaren who conducted the surveyed this region. However, some people argue that the naming was after David McLaren, the colonial manager of South Australia Company.

The first vines in this region were grown by John Reynell and Thomas Hardy in 1838, which is a good 180 years ago from now. These two people became the pioneers of wine industry in this area. At present, the region boasts of more than 80 cellar doors and 120 odd wineries.

McLaren Vale wineries grown different varieties of grapes. Shiraz dominates with about 55% of vineyard area of this region under its cultivation. Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache are the other two major varieties. Besides, there are a number of other grape varieties which respond well to Mediterranean type of climate.

Among the prominent McLaren Vale wineries, to name a few, are Hugo Wines, Zonte's Footstep, Angove Winery, d'Arenberg, Leconfield Wines, Maxwell Wines, Rosemount Wines, Wirra Wirra Vineyards and Geoff Merrill Wines

Effect of climatic change on Aussie wines and wineries

Some of the few burning questions related to climatic change and Australian wine industry -

• How will Australian wines and wineries be affected by climatic change? 
• How is viticulture going to be affected by climatic change?
• How are wineries planning to mitigate climatic change?

Additional solutions for the wineries is to use genetically modified grapes that can withstand high temperatures. Another way is implement canopy management effectively to provide shade or by trellis management so that the vines can remain cool at all times. However, vines should not receive excessive of shade, as it might not good for the produce.

Are Preservative-free Wines Really Worth Celebration?

People have begun to understand the benefits of all organic food. The fact that there is no harmful chemical used in growing this type of food is the single most important reason for people preferring all those items which are not using chemicals, wholly or partly. Preservative-free wines are one of these products which is one of the latest craze for wine lovers. Wineries in Australia are also increasingly developing these wines.

Preservatives are added to the wines to prevent the growth of microbes and to prevent the oxidation of wine. Both of these damage the wine and render it useless for consumption. There is a need for adding preservatives in order to keep these in check. These preservatives could be the alcohol, the acid, the sulphites and even the ascorbic acid. Out of these it is the sulphites which are marked as unhealthy for consumption. Many wine experts believe that singling out sulphites for being unhealthy is wrong and they give a number of reasons for clarifying their position in this respect.

The sulphites are in use for a long period of time and even the ancient and medieval period wine-making involved the use of sulphites for preserving wines. Even if you were to dismiss this argument on the pretext that the people at that time were not very much aware of its negative impact, the next argument put in defence of using this compound in wine is that there are insignificant number of people who are allergic to wines. In fact, people could be sensitive to it but a vast majority among them are not allergic to it. So, it is a very small part of population world over which could be somewhat impacted by wines made using sulphur dioxide.

Another argument used by the people is that the preservatives used in dry fruits contain more sulphites than those present in the wines. So, they do question the rationale of removing these from the wines and allowing wines to be amenable to damage by microbes.

Irrespective of the defence put forward, people still prefer buying the preservative-free wines, in short, those wines in which the sulphites are not present.